I have about 10 in total, some are sitting idle, 2 I use heavily, and I just ported a friends VF number to one of them as he is overseas and couldnt get anyone at VF to put his account on hold or similar, and was out of term. Hes gonna stick with them when he gets back.

2 of mine are sitting in GPS units that text me back a location when I text them (or can auto text but would only do that on a best mate situation)

I of mine is going in a GSM gateway soon for an alarm on a remote location to dialout on activation.

So those 3 are active connections that do stuff all - but would probably count. Hardly great if many of the 200k are like that.

Indistry standard I believe is if the sim has been used in the last 6 months then the customer is counted as active.

If they use this standard, then that would imply that, 6 months after launch, every single SIM that has been used at all, even if only to send one text on the launch day, is an 'active' customer.

It is worth noting of course, that neither Voda nor Telecom lost connections this quarter (Telecom added 60,000, Voda added 9,000), and mobile revenues have not dropped as far as I can see (Telecom ARPU is up 19%). That being the case (and remember that the Telecom and Voda numbers are audited - so they cannot lie about it) where do the 200k+ customers of 2degrees come from? surely the market has not grown by that much in 6 months?

IMO, The 206k is largely made up of sims that have been used one, then kept to one side to be used for the odd international call.

Time will tell of course...

ETA: ah, it could be implied from the below bit that 2D are measuring active users as poeople who have made a call (or txt whatever) in the last 30 days so tha tmakes the 206k a little more convincing

"The 206,000 figure does not include the 75,000 promo sim cards sent out at 2degrees' August launch unless one of those customers has paid for a call within the past 30 days said Mr Hertz"

His claim of being 'substantially' higher ARPU than $10 is interesting though. Wonder if he is using the same benchmark of 206k to calculate that, or a different volume.

For all three companies to have added that many connections, and for 2D ARPU to be 'significantly' higher than $10 means that the market has grown by a huge amount over the last 6 months. tens of millions of dollars.

NonprayingMantis: For all three companies to have added that many connections, and for 2D ARPU to be 'significantly' higher than $10 means that the market has grown by a huge amount over the last 6 months. tens of millions of dollars.

And in a market counted in billions of dollars a year you find that hard to believe? Isn't that what competition is supposed to do - lower prices, encourage usage, grow the market? 50m growth in a market of 3 billion (say) would be 1.6% - lower than inflation.

NonprayingMantis: It is worth noting of course, that neither Voda nor Telecom lost connections this quarter (Telecom added 60,000, Voda added 9,000), and mobile revenues have not dropped as far as I can see (Telecom ARPU is up 19%). That being the case (and remember that the Telecom and Voda numbers are audited - so they cannot lie about it) where do the 200k+ customers of 2degrees come from? surely the market has not grown by that much in 6 months?

You also assume that the available number of subscribers is a fixed, capped amount. Markets in Europe show this not to be the case, with some getting to 140% penetration - ie 40% more phones than population. The simple fact is that people are increasingly having more than one phone/device, something that kids here have been doing for a while - and also something done by a lot of geeks judging by comments on this page...